You tell me to leave it on,
in case a culprit cuts a portal
in the window, grows a shadow
on our landing. So I blast it
to ten, & the six o’clock cracks
the walls with a quake
in China, a ring of dealers
sewing cocaine into hems,
a passenger plane leaving
black crumbs over the Andaman.
These scenes render themselves
to the rooms, ghost the locks
with disembodied words
from blue-faced static,
and when we return
even out in the dark
we see the eyes of the house
bright with conversation,
hear our telly talking to itself,
making us think we might catch
strangers in the act, huddled around
its mouth, staring down its throat.
Simon Costello is from Co. Offaly, Ireland. Poems are published or forthcoming in Rattle, The Stinging Fly, The Galway Review and elsewhere. In 2017 he was one of the winners of the Ekphrastic Poetry Challenge and editor’s choice for US poetry magazine Rattle. He currently lives in China.
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